The article begins by documenting one panel discussion at our conference featuring Eben Moglen, Keith Bergelt of the Open Invention Network, and Nicolas Schifano of Microsoft. It also reports on an exclusive interview with Eben Moglen conducted by Intellectual Property Watch’s David Branigan after the conference. The interview explores how peace was won between the FOSS community and big technology companies.

The Software Freedom Law Center is excited to welcome you to our 14th Anniversary Fall Conference cohosted by Columbia Law School on Friday, November 2nd, 2018. Below, please find our complete conference program as well as information pertaining to CLE credits. We invite counsel, developers, enterprise users, and other members of free and open source software (FOSS) communities to join us once again for our free annual conference to explore legal issues surrounding FOSS.

The Software Freedom Law Center is proud to make available a whitepaper by Mark Shuttleworth, CEO of Canonical, Ltd., and Eben Moglen, Founding Director of the Software Freedom Law Center and Professor of Law at Columbia Law School. The whitepaper shows how new capabilities in the free and open source software stack enable highly regulated and sensitive industrial concerns to take advantage of the full spectrum of modern copyleft software.

The Software Freedom Law Center is pleased to announce our 14th Anniversary Fall Conference cohosted by Columbia Law School on Friday, November 2, 2018. We will bring together counsel, developers, enterprise users, and other members of free and open source software (FOSS) communities to join us in exploring legal issues surrounding FOSS.

Professor Eben Moglen has issued a statement on the significance of the Supreme Court’s decision in Carpenter v. United States. Eben Moglen is the President, Executive Director, and Founder of the Software Freedom Law Center and Professor of Law at Columbia Law School, where he teaches the courses Law in the Internet Society and Computers, Privacy and the Law, among other courses. He is a legal expert on the Fourth Amendment, constitutional law, privacy law, and the governance of emerging digital technologies.

“Localisation seems like a beneficial means of expressing digital sovereignty. In fact, it imposes severe costs that far outweigh its benefits. In societies not governed by the rule of law, localisation amplifies the power of the organs of oppression, just as the form of ‘personal localisation’ represented by the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain amplified the power of Stasi and the KGB….”

“…Privacy cannot be assured at all, illegal government surveillance cannot be prevented, and protection of the economy from widespread crime is impossible if government mandatorily collects information capable of compromising every citizen’s identity and then takes no responsibility for the management of risks downstream.”